Lessons Learned Forum at Southfield

Hi Class,

Many people are intimidated when it comes to learning binary mostly because they feel that they are not good at math.  Binary is simply a different numbering system, so if you can count and add you can learn binary.  We’ve also talked about hexadecimal being used to represent TCP/IP v6 addresses, but hexadecimal is used for a lot more than that.  The following article does a good job of explaining both, so read it and write a short paragraph about what you learned from it.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/tips/binhex.aspx

Hi Class,

We’ve been talking firewalls and security since the beginning if class. There are a lot of different kinds of firewalls people can use today so it’s very important to know the differences. The following articles explains what they are and how they differ from each each other. Read it and write a short paragraph about what you learned from it that you didn’t learn in class.

http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Comparing_Firewall_Features.html

Hi Class,

We’ve learned about a lot of troubleshooting tools to help fix problems you may be having with Vista. The following article does a good job summarizing what each tool does which is something we need to know for the exam. Read it and write a paragraph about what you learned from it.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/20-Hidden-Windows-Vista-Tools-67133.shtml

Hi Class,

RRAS is a very hefty topic and it was difficult deciding what to post for this week.  I decided to with RADIUS because it’s the topic that the book spends the least amount of time on RADIUS. RADIUS is a standard Internet service and Microsoft’s implementation of RADIUS is called Internet Authentication Service, which leads to some confusion. So whenever Microsoft refers to IAS they are referring to RADIUS. Read the following article and write a short paragraph about what you learned from it.

http://www.tech-faq.com/implementing-ias.shtml

Hi Class,

Fixing connection problems is a very important topic on the exam and in real life. Almost every computer in use today at least connects to the Internet and if it  can’t we’ll be called on to solve the problem. The following article lists a handful of things your always try first as well as other tips for special situations. Read it and write a paragraph about what information you feel is most useful.

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/33307acf-0698-41ba-b014-ea0a2eb8d0a81033.mspx

Hi Class,

Even though we’ve mentioned PGP a few times in class and the this weeks article is titled “How PGP Works” it really about encryption, digital signatures, and digital certificates. Understanding these concepts are key to understanding security from an IT perspective. I don’t think you’d be surprised if I told you that many IT professionals don’t understand these concepts so I want to make sure that you do.  The following article does a very good job of explaining many of the security related items we discussed in class that are not in the book. It also goes more in depth, so as always read it and write a short paragraph about what you learned from it.

http://www.pgpi.org/doc/pgpintro/

Hi Class,

Theoretically, file and printer sharing should be straight forward once you know what’s going on, but people tend to have problems when they go home and try to set it up.  Share files between XP and Vista computers seems to be particularly problematic.  This weeks article is very short and it shows step by step how to setup file and printer sharing as well as what you need to if your having problems. There are links to other related articles, so your paragraph can be about any of them.  I would really like to hear if this article solved any problems you are having at home.

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-us/help/5f605e4b-3379-4c6c-afa4-d446ae76d14b1033.mspx#EQCAC

Hi Class,

WINS is something that is being phased out, but sometimes rears its ugly head every now and then. We mentioned it in class but we don’t really cover it, so this weeks article is all about WINS.  It’s from the same site that the DHCP and DNS article’s were from (I’m really liking this site) so it’s very similar to those. Read it and write a short paragraph about what you learned fro it.

http://www.tech-faq.com/implementing-wins.shtml

Hi Class,

We covered DNS in detail during class, but we didn’t talk at all about the planning aspects of DNS.  You can’t configure DNS without a plan for how you want it to work.  The following article summarizes what we learned in class as well as many planning aspects of DNS that we didn’t cover.

http://www.tech-faq.com/planning-and-implementing-a-dns-namespace.shtml

Hi Class,

Knowing when and what to backup is just as important as knowing how to backup you computer; this is known as your backup strategy. Without a good backup strategy you may find it difficult to perform restores when you need to and even worst, you may find your self not performing backups at all because of the time and effort that may be involved.  The following article is about backup strategy; please read it and write a paragraph about what you think is most important or the most useful. The article has several links, so your paragraph can be about any of the links as well.

http://tweakhound.com/vista/backup/index.htm